Nightbrothers
by skywalker05
Summary: There is magic in the forest, and its poison keeps them alive. One-sentence prompt fills about Maul and Savage in The Clone Wars and Son of Dathomir.


1\. Crash

After Maul and Savage break away from the ship that Kenobi and the Nightsister stole from them, Maul shivers and wheezes in the escape pod as he seethes, thinking of the close heat of Lotho Minor, of the fires that always seem to wait under atmospheres.

2\. Dim

Savage isn't stupid, but if there's an intelligence there, Maul has yet to (bother to) examine it.

3\. Futile

They left me, he thinks. There was someone at the bottom of the pit, and then they left.

4\. Erratic

Savage thinks that his brother in the hold is like a wild animal, admirably sharp-toothed and ferocious, and becoming inconvenient and dangerous in close quarters.

5\. Loved

Nightsisters take mates, right, that's what they do (ash-black fingers in the firelight as the young Nightbrothers talk about it in whispers), but this one, she just wants to fight.

6\. Soft

In the green mist Maul sees the faces of people like chewed food, soft and pink, their eyes hidden behind senatorial finery.

7\. Hot

The fire-breathers creak and scream, searching for a clear place in which their programming dictates they can dump their mouthfuls of molten garbage.

8\. Shackles

The Force (hot, cold, corpses shedding meat molecules into space, the carbon inside a diamond) shall (imperative, slave-word, dominion) free (Jedi denial - we are all free until chained.)

9\. Broken

As if he thought that the rules would be broken for his brother; as if he thought this time, for once in a thousand years, Bane's Rule would not hold.

10\. Precious

Strange that Kenobi would yoke himself so to someone who could not feel the Force; strange that he would mourn her.

11\. Odds and Ends

Feral is buried, not hung in the trees to be reborn.

12\. Tea

The Mandalorian princeling gave him a hot, bitter tea, which, Viszla said, came from a plant that was predatory itself.

13\. Twisted

He is surprised at how quickly he regains his balance on the clawed feet Talzin gave him. He would have been willing to crawl to Kenobi on stumps.

14\. Echo

Savage knows he's stupefied as he follows the flickering talisman in the cave, and in the fear he wishes he had a woman with him, someone who would protect him.

15\. Soothe

When Talzin touches Savage's forehead her finger is calloused and cold; he very clearly feels his eyes cross, and then he loses time.

16\. Fight

Teaching Savage the importance of hierarchy is almost as difficult as intimidating him, but Maul has no shortage of weapons to use in doing both.

17\. Naked

When Sidious imprisons Maul on Stygeon Prime, he looks at his former apprentice with focused derision in his yellow eyes, inspecting the mechanical legs from across the room with an especially lofty hatred.

18\. Push

The layered, discordant hum of Grievous' lightsabers angers Maul in a way he can use, focusing him, directing him through the middle of that swarm.

19\. Alive

Witches in front of him, stone below him. Savage looks for an axe he knows he should have in his hand.

20\. New

He is fear, he is the hunter, he is scrabbling in the black dirt, he has lost several teeth in raw meet and on the edges of bones.

21\. Born

His first memory is of decorative black stripes on the dusty floor of an otherwise innocuous corner in the Works.

22\. Murmur

"Brother," Sidious says, like it will give him some tactical advantage, and Maul ignores him. (One does not call out for one's master in the middle of a fight. It has too many syllables.)

23\. Devious

A fistful of Kenobi's sweat-cold collars in his hand and Maul's lightsaber hovering over the Jedi's right eye; after this, Maul plans to cut Kenobi's legs off slowly.

24\. Isolation

Oxygen-starved in the escape pod, Savage's muscled arm brushing against his own, Maul's thoughts alternate between an irritable lethargy and the hot, impotent anger that he knows is the edge of panic.

25\. Starve

The snake-creature brings him meat because the hunter once held him up in two hands and planned to flay it with his teeth. Instead, it reminds the hunter to occasionally cook his food.

25\. Machine

Kast bounds like she has metal legs too, forceful and fast on her toes.

27\. Winter

He hadn't forgotten the cold, or the fact that without any readouts he didn't know what temperature extremes his legs could bear, but for a moment he just watches the snow move while the Mandalorians devastate Sidious' battle droids.

28\. Ignore

Savage shakes his head when he finds himself looking to Maul for approval. Why follow this outsider, this man who uses magic like Dooku did? (This brother? He has such a need for a brother. He feels like he had one once, even though he can't remember, and that distant thought just draws his gaze back to the brother he has now.)

29\. Color

The ink faded in places, from deep black to a blue-purple that bled into the red. When Talzin healed him, she healed those too.

30\. Grace

Savage apologizes at the moment of his death, as if that can matter in the face of Sidious. He's wasting his breath on masters again.


End file.
